Growing up, I was too curious, and the victim to my isochronic rows of unrelenting questions was always my mother because she was such a good storyteller, listener, and she alone had the patience to keep up with my questions, which were usually irregular, like the pin-pointing of a suspended ball ricocheting on a corridor. 

I recall one time asking her why people considered left as bad and right as good. Like, why was it that on the day Jesus Christ was crucified, the thief on the right side had just the right words in his mouth and went to Heaven with the Messiah, while the condemned criminal on the left side was left out and took a bumpy, tormenting trip to Hell all alone. Or even the fact that Jesus Christ was seated at the right hand side of God. Why was it that the people who had fallen out of favour with God were cast to the left? And what about that fictional story that the broad and wider road to Hell was located on the left, while the narrowed road leading to Heaven was on the right?

My mother most times did not have all the answers to my questions. Sometimes she feigned ignorance and acted as if she didn’t hear me the first time, but this particular question made her uneasy; I had disturbed her until her countenance changed and the irritation showed on her face like a heavy make-up. She snapped, said it was just fiction: nobody knew what Heaven or Hell looked like or where they were located. I remember her reiterating that left was bad and right was good. I didn’t know this would later shape my life in the future.

Everything—and by everything, I mean the very beginning that marked the end of my usage of the right hand—started in my early teens. Two of our next-door neighbours asked if I was a leftie. I shook my head and uttered a long no, wondering what prompted them to make such a statement. Do I look like one? But then, a left-handed person was not known on the basis of their appearance.

The question stopped for a while until one Saturday in 2012. I was outside washing my clothes when my father’s friend asked that same question. “Solomon, are you a leftie?”

I shook my head. “No sir.”

“Why are you using your left hand to scrub the clothes?”

I stared at my hands as if seeing them for the first time, realising that all this while I was using my left hand to wash and wasn’t aware of it. 

He smiled when the silence stretched on. “Maybe you were taught to wash by a left-handed person. That’s how my son started to stammer because his close friend at that time was a stammerer.” He laughed as he said this. “I had to flog him mercilessly before he stopped.” He stood and left, peals of laughter trailing after him, while my mind was barraged by a series of questions. Do they teach people to use the left hand? Who was the leftie in our family that taught me to use the left hand? Why would the person even do that? These questions plagued my mind. I switched to my right hand and tried washing with it, but it proved tedious. After I was done, I went straight to my mother and asked if any relatives that once stayed with us when we were kids were lefties? She said no. I asked, “what about our neighbors?”

She hissed. “Please, don’t bother me.” But she did gave me a reply—there were no known lefties in our previous compounds.

I got my answer right there. If nobody taught me how to use the left hand, then I must have been born that way.

At school, I started using my left hand to write. It was clumsy at first until it began to pick form and shape, the words soon resembling intelligible sentences. 

Left out, Not Behind

To be left out in a world full of completely dextral individuals feels like to be left out or left behind. In my first year in the University, our Regional and Urban Planning lecturer told us that in most structures, lefties were often neglected because doors and window handles were made to accommodate the right hand, meant for right-hand use, the same for the kickstarter in every motorcycle and the pull cords in every generator. It was then it dawned on me that left-handed people were never taken into consideration in manufacturing and production.

At home, children are beaten for eating with their left hands. Our people berate you if you give or collect things from them with your left hand. We shake with our right hands and not our left, yes?

In secondary school, my classmates stared when I started writing with my left hand. I read somewhere that the reason they call lefties sinistral is because people previously associated them with the devil or demon; they were not common and were often awkward.

Over the years, I resisted my mother’s condemnation of my left-handedness. She was the most disturbed in our house. “Why are you eating with your left hand?” she would ask. “When did you start brushing with your left hand? You are writing with your left hand now?”

I continued to use the left hand regardless of whether it belonged to the devil or not, whether it was bad or not. My father only commented once, asking if my teachers could comprehend my handwriting. I told him I was getting better at it and that it didn’t hinder my academic progress. He held his peace, but I was careful enough not to give him things with my left hand.

I began to see my mother in a different light. She often told us about the things she loved, the places she had visited while working as a Statistician with the National Bureau of Statistics, but there she was balking at the reality of her left-handed son.

One day she returned from a neighbour’s house, her brows knotted. “Baba Junior is too lenient with his children,” she told my father. “Can you imagine that Tahima gave him water with her left hand and he just sat there, doing nothing? I couldn’t resist it. I shouted at her to use her right hand instead and he sat there giving excuses. I’m sure she must have dipped that left hand of hers into the drum of water.”

My father grunted.

She later succumbed to my sinistrality when it was obvious nobody would support her disapproval. Later, she would tell me about her father, a hunter, who was left-handed. He could take out his target with one single shot, she said. “None of his children took over from him.”

“But his grandchildren are.” I said, smiling. 

At the school where I teach, my students try to imitate my left hand each time I write down notes for them on the whiteboard. The teachers admire how neat and well-arranged my handwriting is, saying stuff like, “Lefties are just blessed with good handwriting.” I recall once I went to a bookstore to purchase some books and the books were not available. The storekeeper asked me to write down the name of the author, the name of the books, and my phone number on a sheet of paper. When I penned down the necessary information, he asked with admiration in his eyes if I was an artist. I nodded and he went ahead to tell me that one of his sons was a leftie and talented artist also. I laughed and told him that my artistry wasn’t in drawing but in writing. I left the bookstore with a broad smile. 

When I sit and ruminate on my past, the question of my sinistrality comes to mind. As a child, I loved to be in the in-between of my struggle; a way of not picking sides especially when tough decisions were involved, or the fact that I was basking in the sheer glory of my ambidextrousity—one who could use both legs and hands equally, and the attention I drew to have picked a side. But presently, if one should probe me on my sinistrality, I  already have my answer: Yes, I am left-handed and I am so proud to be one.

About the Author:

Solomon T. Hamza is a Nigerian writer. He writes on various intricacies of life, especially ones that keep him awake at night and musing during the day. His works have been published on Brittle Paper, Shallow Tales Review, Ice Floe Press, RoadRunner Review, Agbowó, Salamander Ink Magazine, Afritondo and elsewhere. He tweets @ST_hamza001.

*Feature image by Enchax Creative on Unsplash